Posted by Tomatheus on September 14, 2013, at 14:47:21
In reply to Taking vitamin D again, posted by Tomatheus on August 14, 2013, at 17:51:39
Hello Babblers,
It's been a month since my last (and first) post to this thread, so I figured that it would be a good idea to post another message today with an update on my vitamin D trial. I said in my previous post to this thread that I would be gradually increasing my vitamin D dose, and that's what I've done. After increasing my dose to 800 IU, I increased to 1,200 IU, and then to 1,400 IU, which is where I'm at now. I still plan to eventually increase my dose to 4,000 or 5,000 IU, assuming that I find the supplement to be tolerable at higher doses.
So, how has my trial been going so far? All in all, it hasn't been going badly. I'm still noticing a reduction in the severity of my fatigue, hypersomnia, and difficulty concentrating with it being a little more than a month since I started taking vitamin D. My response to the vitamin D hasn't been entirely consistent, as I've felt better on certain days than on others, but even on the days in which the vitamin D seemed to be exerting less in terms of therapeutic benefits relative to the days in which I seemed to be more responsive, it still felt as though the vitamin D was doing a little something.
Given the fact that I have a long history of having supplements seemingly lose their effectiveness after taking them for anywhere from a few days to around a month (including lower-dose vitamin D itself, which seemed to exert benefits for about two weeks before becoming seemingly ineffective for my symptoms), I think it's encouraging that I'm still responding to the vitamin D at this point. It's hard to tell if part of the reason why I'm still responsive at this point has to do with the fact that I've increased my dose three times since starting the supplement. Regardless as to whether or not I would still be responsive to the vitamin D if I weren't following my plan of gradually increasing the dose, I'm still encouraged by the fact that I'm responding at some level right now. At the same time, it is with cautious optimism that I await the results of this trial. I somehow think that if I end up tolerating the vitamin D well enough to be able to take a higher dose of the vitamin for an extended period of time that my response will ultimately look different from how it looks right now.
And as far as tolerability is concerned, the only lasting side effect that I've noticed since starting vitamin D (or actually, since I increased my dose from 800 IU to 1,200 IU) is a small increase in some of my psychotic symptoms, most notably my sound hallucinations and what I call my pseudohallucinations (which are basically voice-like hallucinations that I don't so much hear as I feel that they're being imprinted in my mind). Both types of hallucinations are at present a little bit worse than they were before I started taking vitamin D, but they didn't seem to get any worse after I increased my dose from 1,200 IU to 1,400 IU -- they only seemed to get worse after my 800-IU-to-1,200-IU dose increase. Again, I will probably increase my dose further despite the increase in the symptoms that I mentioned here, but I plan to increase the dose very slowly to make sure that my psychotic symptoms don't get too out of control.
Well, that sums up this update. I hope that all of you who are reading this are doing well (or at least as well as you can be doing), and I hope that I'll have good things to report in my next update.
T.
Conditions:
* chronic fatigue, hypersomnia, and related symptoms
* schizoaffective disorderTaking Abilify, niacin, vit D
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poster:Tomatheus
thread:1049013
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20130319/msgs/1050663.html